Pain & Pleasure

Nature has put Man under 2 gods: Pain & Pleasure.

We often talk about marginal costs, marginal benefits, but there are people who will skeptical that this costs-benefits thingy is going to apply to everything. I dont exactly know whats going on in that brain of theirs, but lemme rephrase it this way.

Benefits = Pleasure Costs = Pain

Simple as that. And more often that not, everyone of us have the number one goal of minimising the reading on our own Pain-o-meter, and maximise the reading on our Pleasur-o-meter. Oh, I can hear some your disagreement simmering down there. That cannot be, you say, there are people who actively want to seek Pain, and there are lots of people who do not place self-interest as No.1 goal. Aha, but I say, those people that seek pain actively, do so because pain gives themselves greater pleasure than the pain. Those people that always put others first before themselves because to them, helping others be happy, means that they gain pleasure as well.
Wiol ono. For you.
Sounds oxymoronic? Noo.. this is because pain is quite easily quantified. At least relative to happiness. Why? Because everyone likes to complain, grumble, groan, and say 'ouch'. Or at least express their discomfort in one way or another. But however, happiness is not something that is easily quantified/measured, because it is not a material good, and is very difficult to measure in terms of a material good. Happiness is something elusive, very difficult to describe, except that for the fact that it..just make you feel 'up'. Or contented. Whatsoever. So pain can be something that induce pleasure, but pleasure can never induce pain. Getting mixed up? Never mind, some day you will understand.
It is funny how the behaviour of love is close to the behaviour of insanity.
Lets put this another way. Pleasure is equivalent to incentives, and pain is a disincentives. Everybody responds to both. If I dangle the prospect of a free lunch in front you, you will jump at it. Thats a incentive. If I take out a knife, and threaten, you will jump too. Thats an disincentive. A combination of incentives and disincentives are the movers of people. It is what motivates people.
Primum Movens
Perhaps, by selfishly going for our own interests, we can acheive the greater good. Paradoxically, in many cases, men setting with the goal in mind to achieve greater good, end up in failure. To see why selfishness might bring the greater good, note that the interests of 6 billion people cannot be the same. These interests will include the extremes, and as people actively seek self interests, while noting that others are also pursuing self-interest, the net result is the middle ground-the equilibrium. This is the best possible outcome.
人不为己，天诛地灭
Others say, this is rubbish, and tote out the Prisoner's Dilemma as evidence. But i think I can solve the dilemma already. First of all, I dont think we can maximise pleasure and minimise pain at the same time. So at anyone time, you choose either. And you will choose so that your total utility, which is (pleasure - pain) is as large as possible. Given this, now go back and think on the Prisoner's Dilemma. Convince yourself it is the best outcome possible. There is no better.

Incidentally, you know the you go to BlogSkins.com, and all those designs have dummy entries written in, that goes 'Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet..' Did you know it was taken out out of a passage about pain and pleasure? The original was written by Cicero, and titled "About the Extremes of Good and Evil'

Here is the part of the original text.

…neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet,
consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut
labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam,
quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid
ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea
voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum
fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

The translation:

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of
itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in
which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial
example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to
obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man
who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who
avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

We are all slaves to Passion.
Radix malorum est Cupiditas, primum movens.

Information Asymmetry

Every one in the world is a mortal(and that means not immortal), and therefore does not share in God's all-knowing omnipotence. When i talk about information here, I mean information in general, like knowledge, like in the IT sense.

When one thinks carefully about it, information asymmetry appears to be the root to many things in the world, market failure, uncertainty of the future, chaotic theory, etc etc, the list goes on, if you willing to hear.

It is not enough to have complete information, because it is also necessary to to have the information to process that informantion. I think this what part of science should be dedicated to, how to understand understanding. Because knowledge in science in progressing way faster than the knowledge on how humans can use it effectively, technology in science are creating much grief in the society. The double edged sword, some term it. It wouldnt be a double edged sword if we knew how to remove the other edge.

Information asymmetry has its workings in game theory, and markets. One of the assumptions of perfect market competition is perfect information. But obviously this never occurs. Even if it occurs, the cost of obtaining the information is so high that many never bother finding out. Which is why people vote for politicians without really knowing who they are, their true personality, their shortcomings, etc. Even though game theory and economy tries to get around this information asymmetry by using rational logic analysis, we are unable to to achieve 100% prediction accuracy, primarily because there is myriad of ways of reasoning, and we cannot hope to understand all of them, or even to get hold of all of them.

Information asymmetry also occurs in physics. In trying to analyse a box of air molecules numbering trillions of billions, it is not possible to analyse the Newtonian motion for all of the individual molecules, because we simply do not have the means to process the amount of information. Instead we settle for the next best alterntive: by means of statistics and probability.

Information asymmetry is only inherent in the laws of nature. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is a good example of no matter how much our current mathematical systems try, you cannot answer all questions, and question all the truths, without having to add more assumptions on top of the system. In physics, quantum mechanics provide the example of the Heisernberg Uncertainty Principle. Which says if you want to know a certain variable precisely, you must be prepared to forgo the precision of another related variable.

Perhaps one can define time's arrow using gain of information as a benchmark. The more information you have, the more 'time' units have moved on. Oh, I forgot, information is related to entropy. To possess information is to have an increase in entropy. Hmm..perhaps we are limited by how much total entropy that the universe can have?

Recipe for Low Class Unity

1) Each Individual must really prefer hanging out with certain people than the rest.

This results in unequal strength of bonding in the class. There are people operating on pd-d interactions, people operating on hydrogen bonding, people operating on strong ion-dipole interactions, people operating on td-id. Like dissolves like, and we have got clumps of people (aka cliques) that are that stay clumped. Nobody really hates any other person in class, but just have preferences. Good enough to form clumps.
Innocent rule, but devastating consequences.
2) Cliques must mix rarely with one another.

This follows from above. If one clique operates on pd-d, and another operates on td-id then obviously the 2 cliques do not mix. Like oil, petrol, glycerine, and water all thrown together, you get bubbles of each liquid that just dont mix with one another no matter how you shake them together.
This is worse than oil and water.
3) If 3 people do not really agree with each other, and 10 people rarely agree with one another, then 5 cliques of total 25 people must never agree with anyone else.

Obviously, in a group of people, they seldom agree on each other even on the most minor of details. Even if the group of people are friends. And if that is so, what can possibly be worse is the presence of strong 'labour unions' within that lobby for varying interests.
Cant we compromise for once?
4) As an individual, do not make a decision unless 5 or more people makes a decision. When asked about one's opinion, say 'suibian' or say 'I dunno'.

This the major stoning principle. If everyone waits for everyone else to make a decision, obviously no one will make a decision. Then the whole group of people can just stand in the middle of nowhere and 'observe 10 min of silence'. This principle works hand in hand with RULE 3 above. When someone finally do make a decision, the rest just shoots it down, because they do not agree. And the group goes back to stone another 5 min. And another person finally makes a decision, only to be shot down, and the group resumes stoning..ad infinituum.
No one isdumb, why act like dumb people who cannot speak?
5) Every individual must be rational.

Why rational? See, to have class unity, everyone must participate, or else where is the unity? But the above rules have created this clumping in the class. So, lets just take any individual and look and if the person has ANY incentive at all to participate. The answer is obviously no. Lets hear what the rational being would say, " Oh man, the class unity is so damn low. Should I participate? Hmm..no, because nothing I do would really affect the net result. No matter how hard I try, I wont make any difference, because no one else is going to try." See the argument? He is arguing that the marginal cost is too high and marginal benefit too low. We call this phenomenon, the diffused self interest. Because the marginal benefit is split over a large group of people, so PRIVATE marginal benefit is low. If every individual participates, then total cost is low, but PRIVATE marginal cost is high.

So no one tries. Obviously, everyone is thinking the same way, being all rational and smart people. Then of course you get zero unity trap that is very difficult to get out of.
If each do not want try, no one will EVER try.
Aspice, officio fungeris sine spe honoris amplioris.
Face it, you are stuck in a dead-end job.
Still I must march on, I will not give up until its August.
Reading between the lines. Try harder. Uphill task indeed.

Rationally irrational

There's always two sides to the same coin. Perhaps it have always been the same side after all, just a different angle of looking at things. Here, lets examine what is rationality.

Wikipedia states that rationality is associated with the idea of reason. This reason could be logic, motive, or(/and)the process where an item useful to us is maximised and the item harmful to us minimised.

To define rationality, you might want to look at irrationality for a benchmark. After all, how to judge if a person is good if you do not have a bad person as benchmark? Irrationality is a polite way to that a person is insane, mad, or just plain dumb.

But I think that rationality and irrationality are really the 2 equal sides of the same coin. There is something called rationally irrational. A person could be irrational for a reason.

There is this theory called "Madman Theory". If you can convince your opponent that you are irrational, and commit yourself to crazy acts, your opponent might be sufficiently intimidated enough to back off. And you win without even spending effort in a fight. This was what happened during the Cold War. President Nixon of USA wanted to convinve the Russians that he was not to be trifled with. That he was absolutely irrational and might blow everyone up if they were not careful. The Russians being fearful of "Madman Nixon" backed down eventually.

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry -- and he has his hand on the nuclear button' -- and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

This calculated irrationality had always been used from past ages. Armies fighting in foriegn lands would win because their Generals had burnt the bridges. It seemed like the ultimate madman act, but by burning the route home, the soldiers knew that they had only one way to get home; that is to exterminate their foes. The soldiers would fight like madman and get out alive. Cornering yourself made you fight like any other corenered dog. It was actually a rational act, because by reducing your own options, you actually made yourself more focused.

This in more technical terms was called reducing one's opportunity cost. Say you really want to study, but this studying is costing you because your next best activity was to watch TV. It seems like the ultimate madman act to smash the TV after that, but you have made yourself 100% committed to studying because there is no opportunity costs left.Rationally irrational.

Think about it. The next time you see people behaving irrationally, think again. They are being crazy for a reason.

The Multiplier Effect

Here I am to present more about the ideas about the Money Multiplier Effect that was covered today in Econs Lecture.

Ok, we need to simplify matters abit. Say that in my mini-economy, I have yihong who is holding a job as a butcher, Ernest holding another job as a fish-monger, Kahyan holding a job as a tailor, Adeline as a fashion designer. One person's revenue is another's expenditure.

Imagine me, the government, going to yihong to buy $100 worth of meat. This is part of my government spending to kick start the dying ashes of my economy. So yihong now as extra $100 income. Imagine we do not have leakages, that is almightly benevolent me does not tax my peasants, neither do my peasants save. So yihong went to market, met Ernest the fish-monger, and using that $100, bought 20 fishes home. So now, Ernest has extra $100 income.

Ernest went to Kahyan, to get his shirt patched up, and paid her $100 for her services. Kahyan now has extra $100 of income. Kahyan went to Adeline the fashion designer to buy new designs, and paid Adeline $100 dollars.

Adeline went to yihong to buy meat, and paid yihong $100 dollars....Amazing, you have $100 that buy meat, fish, cloth, designs, meat, fish, cloth, designs,meat, fish, cloth, designs, ad infinituum. So you see, this $100 is very mighty indeed. It bought a lot of goods and services and would have continued to buy more stuff.

This is the multiplier effect at heart. In a economy with absolutely no leakages, the $100 could buy up to an infinite amount of goods and services. But of course, reality isnt so rosy. So we got savings, we got taxes, and shipping money to other countries, etc. So, each round, we only like spend, eg 50% of the income.

Actually the equation describing this phenomenon is the GEOMETRIC PROGRESSION. Yep, the good old GP that we learnt in maths last year. Since the percentage of income that we spend is less than 1, than mathematically speaking, taken to infinity, this multiplier effect must stop eventually because sum of the series will converge on some value. Though the equation is not to be studied at H1 level, I am very sure that if every one saw the equation for the multiplier, they would exclaim in recognition.

Oh, btw, in my mini-economy, I spent my way out of the recession. Spend , spend, spend. Go and get that pair of shoes that you have been eyeing for ages! It might spur the economy. Who knows? The Butterfly Effect.

Personality!

My Personality

Neuroticism	24
Extraversion	43
Openness To Experience	55
Agreeableness	22
Conscientiousness	60

You are neither a subdued loner nor a jovial chatterbox. You enjoy time with others but also time alone. You are generally calm and composed, reacting moderately well to situations that most people would describe as stressful. A desire for tradition does not prevent you from trying new things. Your thinking is neither simple nor complex. To others you appear to be a well-educated person but not an intellectual. People see you as tough, critical, and uncompromising and you have less concern with others' needs than with your own. You are reasonably reliable, organized, and self-controlled.

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The Dollar Auction

Been wanting to play this sometime, but didnt get the opportunity to. But here is it is anyway. In the dollar auction, the auctioneer(sp?) puts out a dollar for auction. He says that there are just 2 rules to play the auction game. First of all, the dollar goes to the person that has made the highest bid. Second, the person who made the second highest bid must also pay the auctioneer.

La extraordinaire. Isnt it?

Ok, so 2 people play this game. The first one bids, 10 cents. The second one, bids 20cents. The first one sees this and bids 30 cents. Because the the marginal benefit is greater than the marginal cost, either one of them can continue to increase their bid. This outbidding continues until the bid reaches one dollar.

Then this is when things heats up. The person who bid 99 cents, is surely going to to bid $1.10. This is because if he loses the bet, he is going to pay 99 cents to the auctioneer for nothing! If he wins the bet, his loss at least, is only 10 cent. So obviously, he chooses the lesser of the 2 evils, and bids $1.10.

Oh my my my, now the person who bid $1 thinks, I cant afford to lose this bet! I am going to pay one dollar for nothing! Better to increase my bid to $1.20. This way, if I win, I can reduce my losses to 20cents.

This is escalating things a bit. Remember the previous person who bids $1.10? Now it looks like he is going to lose his bet. So to minimise his losses, he increases his bid somemore, to $1.30.

See what is going on? Each side is now caught in a very strong updraft. Both must minimise their losses. If they dont, they would be losing a lot of money. So both of them keep trying to outbid each other. From 10 cents, they would reach thousands of dollars. This game will only stop when one party goes bankrupt or when one party decides he just cannot keep up anymore.

This game was played in real life and I can assure you, the result was that a bid of millions of dollars was at stake. That game was the Cold War. USA and the USSR trying to outbid each other in the arms race, they couldnt stop because if one them loses the result for that nation would have disastrous..

Who Would read between the lines?
Who wants a meal treat from me? I'm auctioning my dollar out.

Personalities

Its nice to have this kind of intellectual argument going back and forth. And therefore I would like to respond to choo's recent post about personalities.

Yes, you have a superb point. We wear different masks to the world. To your family, you wear one sort of mask, to your friends another mask, and to teachers or cca, another one. What mask is that? The mask of personalities of course. We will never grasp each other's true nature totally, but I can help with that. I consider myself a fair judge of character and personalities, and if there is a better judge, that person is Mr Lee.

No matter how many masks you wear, it is ultimately a mask. A mask is not permanent. There's got be some time where your masks cracks. Just so slightly. But enough for people with sharp judgement to tell. And where to we see your true personalities? Your writings of course. Your blog for example is a very good mirror of yourself. No matter how much you hide to other people, you cannot change how you ultimately write. The tone, the language. Everyone leaves his own mark on his langauge.

For you for example, you are truest(perhaps) to the wuliaos. Why? In front of them, there is little need for mask. You can be true in front of them without fearing that they might scorn you.
You would be true to mingxuan. Unless, you are delibrately hiding lots of stuff from him, you would be yourself in front of him.

When you are withdrawn among strangers, because thats when you have worn your mask. You are 'sarcastic' to your parents, because the partial mask that you are wearing(ask me personally whats a partial mask, if you are interested).

You think I am crazy for physics books. Lemme tell you, the books that I read arent just physics. I read chem, physics, geology, metrology, econs, just about any bastion of knowledge. Before you even know me, I was damn good at chem. I followed documentaries obsessively at age 10. I used to be super interested in astronomy. Of course you wouldnt my true extent of knowledge. I dont go around parading the fact that I read.

(If you can read until this part, then congrats. Challenge yourself to read my long posts. I assure I dun fill my posts with crap.)

You do not read outside your physics notes, how are you going to appreciate the beauty and relevancy of physics? I tell you psychology and physics are actually much related. Dun believe me? Read more and you will know.

Hmm.. the best way for you to start psychology? Start now and try to read people's personalities as if you are reading a book. Open yourself to them. Talk to them, read what they write. Talking is another way to read the other person's soul. Oh, and btw, economics is highly relevant to psychology too. The more specific area of interest is Game Theory. If you are free on weekends or hols, search this term on internet.

(Btw, this is not a post aimed at scolding, flaming or anything, if you are starting to get that thought)

Ideas

This is a test entry. I am opening this blog for the purpose of greater clarity of thoughts, and for the purpose of aiding the transfer of ideas.

Purpose

In my opinion the academic system has a flaw in it. The long years of schooling, plus hectic activities has started to instill a sort of 'complacency'. Students learning in Singapore certainly have it different from other countries. While the content taught is of high quality, yet something is being missed.

Perhaps you have wondered about the future. You know, like what you would do, what kind of house you would live in, what kind of cars will you drive, etc. But the future is uncertain, we all know that. And then your thoughts might turn back to current life, current situation. You see yourself, oh dear, I have failed this test again, for the 10th time. And you look somemore and see, ahya, school is getting busier, cca until 7 pm. Go home late, tons of homework to do. Must mug harder. Yet you never find time to do it. When you do find time, you tell yourself, aiya, work so hard for this week already, must have a well-earned rest. And you sit down and sleep.

See the flaw here? Perhaps not. After school, you take out your homework, looks at the benzene ring in disgust. You think, sighs, what has the benzene ring got to do with the future? I want to be a psychologist. You take out your next homework. Omg, what has quantum mechanics gotta do with reality around me. Totally irrelevant, and abstract too. So difficult to understand, you think. You look at your pile of notes. Tml is maths test on CnR, and calculus. And you think, wads the use of this stupid topic. I dont need to do integration next time as a nutritionist.

See the flaw? Lemme tell you. The school system while having the best interests at heart for your development and education, has missed a certain point. That point is where is the relevancy? The school has never really shown you how this subject might be helpful for what stuff later. You dont see the link between real life and the subjects that you are taking. Or you dont care about the link. You think about the future, sigh, look at the present, and you forget about the future fast. Because the present has so many pressing matters, stress, etc, you just want to take a step at a time, and dont think too far ahead. And because you dont want to think too far ahead, you forget to question where exactly are you headed to, and what exactly it is that you want, and why is it the you are doing all this for.

And if your answer is just to earn tht cert so that you can get to a job that can get lots of power and money, then you are too short sighted. What if suddenly one day, you question yourself where exactly are you headed to, and what exactly it is that you want, and why is it the you are doing all this for; you might come down with an identity crisis, and its very easy to fall into Depression. The later that you try to answer this question, the easier it is to fall into a greater crisis. Better to answer that question early than to answer it later.

Invariably, the school becomes a maze of sorts for some people, and those people become lab rats running blindly inside. Not that everyone must plan very far ahead, or work very hard towards a certain goal in mind, but if you can just answer those questions yourself, then you find that life is suddenly a lot more purposely. Without consciously working towards your goal actively, you are subconciously moving towards it. Your mind, would direct nudges in the right direction to your goal, and all you need is to walk towards it. Suddenly you become more purposeful when studying for subjects. Benzene rings look a lot more relevant in life. Quantum mechanics is happening right before you. And subconciously, you are doing Integration all the time.

Think about it. What do you want to do next time? Why do that in future? Why exactly are you doing this now?

JC2 life is certainly more time consuming than JC1. Then again, I suppose I cant complain so much, after all the homework is definitely more challenging now, and that everyone is more or less bogged down by similar subjects, where I have a definite edge(>< hehe).

Responding to choo's blog entry for love being not possession, I would like to offer a bit of insight. See ah, the true essence of love is to be selfless, therefore, to truly love the person, you would continue to love the person even though your love may not reciprocated. But of course, humans are not that noble. We are rational beings, and many consider love devoted to be some sort of marginal cost. Love not reciprocated, is like zero marginal benefit. Obviously quite a lot of people, wont continue this action at all. Also, everyone cant afford to selflessly love someone that is quite unlikely to reciprocate.

But love is not rational action at all, to apply rational analysis on it is futile ultimately.
-------------------
It is curious how having a certain knowledge in an area of active application can be extremely enlightening. Its like having a lens placed before your eyes, and suddenly a whole new world of new spectrum is available. For example, after micro and macro economics, even computer games features economies.

One very good example is MapleStory. Other than whacking monsters, players actively engage in trade of items and money. The mechanism for such trade between individual players is of course determined completely by standard demand and supply. Because there is scarcity of resources(time and rare items), a system of trade eventually occurs.

This game illustrates the free market system. There is no 'government intervention' in this game. However due to lack of government intervention, one certainly sees major problems like inflation, and the bubble economy. Because money in the game is constantly being 'printed' with no govt to regulate, inflation invariably occurs where everyone has more buying power.

And the prices of certain rare items can get really high. This is opportunity for the bubble economy to form. Prices of items get ridiculously high, but eventually the bubble burst.

But in this game, there is no systems of loans and credits. So I think thats why financial crisis do not occur. You need real hard cash(mesos) if you are to buy anything.

Gtg for dinner. More on this intriguing topic tml.